Lucy Westenra as Lucy Western

From the announcement of the Dracula serialization in the Chicago Inter Ocean, May 1899
From the announcement of the Dracula serialization in the Chicago Inter Ocean, May 1899

The spelling of "Westenra" seems have to caused headache for American typesetters not familiar with this originally Dutch family name. In the four announcements of the Dracula serialization in the Chicago Inter Ocean (3-6 May 1899), Lucy is called “Lucy Western,” while in the serialization itself, we find “Westerna” and “Westenra” next to each other, e.g. in the installments of 12 and 16 May 1899. The Charlotte Daily Observer, starting to serialize Dracula from 16 July 1899 on, used “Westerna” throughout the text, but not “Western.” The Washington Times of September 29, 1917 started out with “Wastenra,” but got it right in the issues of September 30 and of 7, 13 and 15 October 1917. Only the Buffalo Courier was able to spell “Westenra” correctly from the beginning, in its issues of2 and 3 March 1900.

 

In the Swedish variants published by Dagen and Aftonbladets Halfvecko-Upplaga, we only find the name “Western,” as used in the four announcements in the Chicago Inter Ocean. Would it be possible that the Swedish editor/translator had gotten hold of copies of the American newspaper and simply copied the initial (miss-)spelling “Western,” without realizing it was erroneous? Just like copies of Aftonbladet and Budapesti Hírlap were exchanged on a daily basis, reaching their destination after 3-5 days, so newspapers were sent back and forth between Stockholm and Chicago. Alternatively, "A-e" may have recognized the error, but found it a clever idea to simplify the name for Swedish readers, once he/she had seen this variant in the Inter Ocean. Probably, we will never know for sure whether this was a trans-atlantic coincidence, or if the Chicago serialization reached Sweden before Dracula was serialized there. The identical deviation from the original on both sides of the ocean should be noted, though.

 

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